Fabrication, Characterization and Optical Investigation of Semi-organic Nonlinear Alanine Hippurate Single Crystals

In the present work, a single crystal of alanine and hippuric acid was prepared through the slow growth dynamics of sample evaporation. The crystallinity, structure, and cell parameters of the produced single crystals were determined by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. While, frequency shifting and the various functional groups of alanine with hippuric acid were investigated by FTIR and FT-Raman studies. In addition, grain size and the morphological shape of alanine hippurate (AH) single crystals were examined by FE-SEM analysis. Transmission of light through the grown material was defined by UV-VIR-NIR study. Moreover, mechanical stability of the grown single crystals was analyzed with Vicker’s microhardness tester. Melting point and thermal stability were tested through TGA, DGA, and DSC investigations. Our results explored that, the prepared single crystals exhibited high-grade transparency and lower cut-off wavelength of about 300 nm. UV–VIS–NIR absorption spectrum revealed that there was less absorption in the visible region, and an emission peak at 574 nm was observed confirming the green emission of the prepared crystals. Interestingly, microhardness investigation showed that our single crystals belonged to the category of soft materials. While, thermal studies investigated the prepared crystals were stable up to 290 °C. Finally, the recorded SHG performance was 1.26 times that of KDP.